


half past two, blood in your ears

by perennials



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 10:09:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19461808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: It’s like finally getting to spend some time alone with your crush, only for him to tell you he’s a vampire and for you to pass out from shock and fear and the fact that he’s got your wrists pinned above your head because you honestly thought he might kiss you but god, you hadn’t been mentally prepared for him to try tokillyou.For the record, Tsukishima is a vampire.





	half past two, blood in your ears

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [half past two, blood in your ears](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19815535) by [Bomzhechmo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bomzhechmo/pseuds/Bomzhechmo)



> originally started dec 2018

Vampire (n.)

Blood-sucking creatures of lore with an aversion to garlic and happiness. Historically untraceable but possessed of great literary value.

Not meant to be hot. Definitely not meant to be hot.

  
  


::

  
  


Let’s say the scene starts like this. It’s dark, of course. And slightly damp, the air sweet but in a dirty, almost off-putting way. And mysterious.

It’s dark, that’s a given, and damp, but the dampness doesn’t come from the fact that it’s been several millennia since the air trapped here was last unearthed. The mystery doesn’t come from the strange contents of their accommodations. The sweetness is just there. Barely present.

In other words, this is not a coffin— this is the dingy alley behind a bar in Asakusa, its underbelly coated in the sticky aftertaste of alcohol. The walls are grimy and crawling with insects. Empty PET bottles and beer cans lie discarded on the floor.

Amidst all this clutter, two figures are frozen in the half-night. One of them, the shorter, has his back pressed up against the concrete wall, its roughness a sharp reminder of the fragility of human existence. Presently, Kuroo Tetsurou is only slightly drunk and very fucking scared. Out of his wits level scared. Ready to shit his pants and just walk off the set scared.

The man who has him trapped in this compromising situation looks like he’s stepped right out of a period drama. His hair is white-blond, flecked with wholesale shards of moonlight, and his eyes are gold. His skin is made of porcelain. Seriously. He’s so pale, Tetsurou might mistake him for a ghost, if not for the fact that he has Tetsurou’s hands pinned to the wall behind him, which means Tetsurou can feel his skin on his  _ quite intimately,  _ which means  _ nope.  _ Not a ghost.

Fuck. He can’t decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, he can’t fucking breathe.

“What if I told you,” Tsukishima Kei from Archaeology with the pink dinosaur socks says in a low, velvety purr, “that I was a vampire.”

It sounds like it’s meant to be a question, but his voice falls flat at the end, so it ends up coming out as nothing more than a statement. By pure speculation Tetsurou guesses that he must be drunk, too, and is not comforted at all by the thought. In the distance, the sound of their co-workers singing and yelling and trying to get into each others’ pants drifts past.

_ Vampire.  _ Well. Tetsurou can’t say he’s surprised, but he’s not particularly happy about things either. He’s maybe three parts horrified, and one part morbidly curious. Half of him is thinking  _ it’s time to scoot the fuck out of here  _ and the other half is very distracted wondering if Tsukishima is actually telling the truth, and not just harboring a very esoteric blood kink.

Tetsurou swallows as subtly as he can, and then forces himself to meet Tsukishima’s gaze. Smiles, too, though he’s sure it’s crooked and not at all charming at the moment, and Tsukishima probably can’t see him anyway in this darkness. Unless he really is a vampire, in which case he should be able to see everything, down to the bead of sweat forming on his upper lip, and the panic in his eyes. “I’d really rather that not be the case.”

“That’s a pity.” Tsukishima thumbs at Tetsurou’s wrists, the crescent-moons of his nails leaving faint marks in the skin there. Tetsurou can feel his pulse skyrocketing. He bites his lip. The bead of sweat disappears.

“Oh? Why?”

“Because,” Tsukishima pauses here to turn up the intensity of his gaze by about half a million watts, and Tetsurou begins to see his life flashing before him, classic film-reel style. He’s going to die on a stupidly cold Friday night with a beer stain on his dress shirt and three cockroaches racing to get into his collar and a hot guy (?) (vampire?) breathing down his neck. Fantastic.

“Because,” Tsukishima repeats, going back to the whole business of being simultaneously very intimidating and very hot. “I’m a vampire.”

“I beg your pardon?” is the only thing Tetsurou manages to get out, before Tsukishima’s leaning down and in (because he’s taller, of course, there’s a rule written somewhere about how vampires have to be taller than their victims), and he feels the  _ ghost  _ of a cold, wintry breath traveling across the juncture of his neck.

—Fuck this, Kuroo Tetsurou is out of the game. He can’t take this anymore. He’s leaving.

  
  


::

  
  


Tsukishima Kei has been teaching at his university for all of one month, and Tetsurou has been crushing on him since week two. Week one was when he first bumped into the new professor outside the toilet no one uses on the third floor of the art wing, and week three was when he bumped into Tsukishima again outside the toilet no one uses on the third floor of the art wing and then promptly walked into a wall.

So you have to understand: Tetsurou is remarkably heartbroken. It’s like getting rejected before you’ve even managed to confess your feelings. It’s like finally getting to spend some time alone with your crush, only for him to tell you he’s a vampire and for you to pass out from shock and fear and the fact that he’s got your wrists pinned above your head because you thought he might kiss you but god, you hadn’t been mentally prepared for him to try to _kill_ you . Tetsurou thinks about these things glumly as he stares up at an unfamiliar ceiling, bundled up on an unfamiliar sofa in a room that smells faintly of citrus. He ordered a clean copy of Plath’s  _ Ariel  _ last week, so if he dies tonight then the poor courier is going to have a hell of a time getting his package to him. Damn, he’s already regretting everything.

There’s a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. And then:

“Good morning. I have water?”

Having forgotten all about the sacred gift of manners, Tetsurou bluntly ignores him. He still feels kind of awful, his stomach doing three-sixties with sadistic glee, and the morning light flooding in through the windows is giving him a killer headache. As a pretty face haloed with more gold (the resemblance to precious metals must be a vampire thing, he decides hopelessly) appears above him, he asks, “are you going to kill me?”

“No,” Tsukishima says wryly, and then disappears out of sight. Inspired by fear and insecurity, Tetsurou kicks at the plush seat beneath him until he’s slid himself up to what barely amounts to a sitting position. Tsukishima has returned and sat down opposite him, and is fiddling with the collar of his sweatshirt. He looks embarrassed.

“You could kill me though, right. Theoretically speaking. Since you’re a— you know— and all.”

“About that—” Tsukishima pauses to gesture at the glass of water he has set on the low table. It’s sleek and modernistic, with a glass countertop and dark wood underneath. It looks expensive.

“Are you planning on putting me in a coma for the rest of my life so I never get to see my adorable students ever again and your secret doesn’t get out?”

Tsukishima’s patience is crumbling. Tetsurou can see it in the way his brow twitches faintly. Tetsurou has dug his own grave.

“Haha, no, I guess not!” He reaches hastily for the proffered glass of water, takes a sip, holds it in his mouth and convinces himself he can’t feel the insides of his cheeks burning away from some horrific vampire-concoction of acid and crocodile tears. It is a very nice glass, and a very nice table. Actually, it’s a pretty nice Saturday morning on the whole minus his killer headache, and Tsukishima’s apartment is furnished with the kind of taste you wouldn’t expect a young college professor living alone to have. Reluctantly, Tetsurou shifts his gaze back to Tsukishima’s face.

“About last night,” Tsukishima repeats. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What exactly  _ did  _ you think you were doing?” If he’s going to get killed for not being able to keep the incredulity out of his voice, then so be it. Tetsurou has to know. It compels him.

“Everyone at the bar seemed drunk, so I thought it would be appropriate to act similarly. Also, it was an excuse to—” Tsukishima stops talking abruptly begins to study his nails. He does not look panicked, per se, but slightly regretful, as though he has crossed a line he did not mean to and will now have to kill Tetsurou after all to preserve the balance of the universe. Tetsurou leans in closer to him, leaving the glass on the sleek, expensive-looking table along the way. Maybe if he acts intimidating then Tsukishima will lose the will to kill him. Probably not, but Tetsurou is always one to take chances. It’s how he ended up in that stupid dingy alley last night to begin with.

“To?”

“I wanted to kiss you.” Tsukishima The Vampire’s ears are slowly turning red, which is all sorts of ridiculous, because for one, he is a vampire, and for another, his presence the night before had been distinctly  _ predatory,  _ not flirty.

Tetsurou doesn’t realize he’s spoken aloud until Tsukishima replies with accusatory passion,  _ “You  _ were far more drunk than I had estimated. Also, alcohol has grown much more potent while I was asleep in my coffin for the last three hundred years.”

“Ah, yes, about the coffin—”

Tsukishima’s eyes are flashing with an intensity one usually only sees in the eyes of professional sportsmen and high schoolers giving teary post-graduation speeches to their friends, and Tetsurou has no idea what to think about anything in the fucking world. Tsukishima from Archaeology with the pink dinosaur socks is now Tsukishima The Vampire with the cute gray pullover, while Tetsurou the dramatic classics professor is now Tetsurou the Vulnerable, trapped on an expensive looking couch with a glass of probably-water and a very blunt lack of tolerance for alcohol. After a moment, Tsukishima rubs at his wrists absently with the pads of his fingers, and looks up. Tetsurou’s heart traitorously hiccups in response to this, and Tsukishima seems to pick up on that, because he is a vampire, and smiles with resignation. His skin is so pale. What the fuck.

“I won’t kill you, I swear, so can we forget about the fact that I’m a vampire?”

What the fuck. Tetsurou’s always wanted to touch his skin. All that pretty pale pretentious moonlight et cetera stuff, the paragraphs of purple prose devoted to a three-by-three cardboard cutout of someone’s elbow— Tsukishima Kei is absolutely worthy of it.

What the fuck.

“How about this.” It’s Tetsurou’s turn to smile, now, and he feels immediately three times more at home in his own crusty, hungover skin. He can tell it’s a good smile, sultry and charming and killer-sweet. Kuroo Tetsurou is nothing if not charming.

“You let me kiss you, and we forget about the fact that I basically passed out last night because you tried to flirt with me using three hundred year-old tactics.”

Tsukishima’s mouth falls open.

“I am.” He gulps visibly. “Not against the idea. Yes.”

Tetsurou stands up, leaning over the table, and closes in, narrowing his eyes. He curls his fingers around Tsukishima’s chin. Up close, Tsukishima’s even prettier, all porcelain and glitter and shit like he fell out of a potter’s hands before he could be put together properly, still soft-sharp with moonlight. There are circles under his eyes, and his lips are dry. He smells like cheap beer.

Tsukishima The Vampire looks up at him with a heavy, three-hundred year old gaze. It’s kind of terrifying, and also kind of hot. Tetsurou is gone. He breathes in shakily— 

“Close your eyes for me?”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs) or [tumblr](http://corpsentry.tumblr.com/)
> 
> my new magical girl power is procrastinating so hard on studying for midterms that i unearth 5 abandoned works in progress from 2018 and finish all of them within two days, uploading them and destroying myself immediately. this was originally a much more ambitious idea, but then i got lazy as all fuck and also i am on a bit of a deadline here, called my history mid term, which i am not done memorizing things for, but fuck it i guess. on the bright side, i finished something i'd originally lost all hope in! maybe i'll even write the sequel someday, which is supposed to involve hinata trying to make everyone bentos to apologize for accidentally waking tsukki from his 300 year old slumber and also kuroo's pink dinosaur sock fetish
> 
> thanks for reading. if you liked it feel free to kudo or comment or sumn, i do appreciate it
> 
> have a good one


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